A.I. for Health, answers the question, How can I improve my health with AI? This is important to BCB Cyber because we want our community to be informed participants in the decisions that affect our health as they are impacted by disruptive technologies. Together, we can make the conversation on health and tech more accessible to everyone, we can make the tools themselves more accessible, and we can use these elements to turn ourselves into the people we want to be.
In order to help out that dialogue, BCB Cyber follows health and tech in a never-ending attempt to educate, entertain, and critically reflect on developments in disruptive health and wellness innovations in potential benefit, current application, and potential pitfall when it comes to using technology that can change and enhance who we are.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning are forcing massive changes in the future of health and wellness. Brain-Machine interfaces, such as those we discuss in Cyber-Health: Robotics & Body Augmentation are without a doubt the leading edge of what is to come.
However, there are far more, perhaps unexpected, impacts that are already changing how we take care of ourselves.
Advances in medical imaging, enhanced diagnostics, improving therapy, better record-keeping and usage, and identifying infection patterns to better inform public health are all ways in which leading health care analysts have posited AI will disrupt healthcare.
Have you ever been to the doctor, and upon check-in been asked to fill out countless forms only to be asked again by a nurse, then by your doctor for the same information??? All this information (data) and we start to wonder if anyone is really listening? Do they really take it all in and use it in their analysis? If not, why go through the routine?
Our bodies, and the current state of health we find ourselves in, exist under a very specific set of conditions. Did we eat today? Is our blood pressure high? How about our blood sugar? Are we getting enough oxygen? Is our liver functioning properly? The data is overwhelming and we expect doctors to solve all problems; we expect them to be miracle workers.
The real problem is that for any, one human to become so proficient in such a narrow set of understandings as to provide the perfect diagnosis is impossible.
Our bodies are filled to the max with data that describe our current health: heart rate, oxygen levels, blood pressures, enzyme levels, the list goes on and on.
The combination of available data and the desire to be healthy create the need for systems that can make more informed decisions based upon these complex environments.
At the heart of these environments are algorithms. Simply put, algorithms are sequences of operations/steps, that when calculated help lead to potential outcomes or even express lack of outcome.
What the heck does that mean? It means formulas can be used to work out what different sets of data mean and analyze how different data sets might be evaluated and used. These are the core tools that artificial intelligence uses to do its thing.
Increasing the amount of data that we feed into these systems improves both how efficient and how capable they are. As human health is such a dynamic environment of its own, there is a deep need for tools such as artificial intelligence, that make use of algorithms at their core, in the drive to enhance our understanding of our bodies and increase our wellness capabilities.
Through advanced AI, known as deep learning (a specialized form of machine learning that allows AI to work more like the human brain), just such an opportunity is possible.
Image by Gordon Johnson from Pixabay
Through advanced AI, known as deep learning (a specialized form of machine learning that allows AI to work more like the human brain), just such an opportunity is possible.
Monitoring, storing, and accessing all that information we are so tired of relating is just the beginning. Acquiring data is the easy part, however.
With the monitors available today, our watch can inform an app that will give us advice on a better workout, reduce our risk for injury, monitor and improve our sleep quality, and even link up with our doctors to better improve their efforts to care for us without ever having to visit them.
Using AI, medicine and health now bridge the gaps in time and space that place a drag on our own improvement and allow us to collect that data into usable and readily accessible forms. Our doctors can know, now, we can know, now, an all of us can use that information to improve our well-being, now.
In this same way, gaining a deeper medical understanding of our bodily data is also producing benefits. Medical imaging is changing as a result. As the tools we use to gain a better picture of what is going on inside us continue to evolve, so too do the algorithms that evaluate those conditions.
When we go into the doctor and receive an MRI or an X-Ray, the information has traditionally been evaluated by a specialist. However, as they are human too, they are often incapable of “seeing” everything, and even the best may sometimes miss important details. However, today we have help. Artificial Intelligence is helping to make medical imaging and diagnostics far more accurate, timely, and ultimately cheaper.
AI has the ability for what is known as computer vision. Computer vision refers simply to how AI can gain knowledge-based understanding from analyzing pictures and video.
It breaks down these images into smaller and smaller parts and can use those pieces to match with other, known, similar parts. When put back together as a whole, we can begin to review and assess what matches and what doesn’t. AI can do this incredibly quickly.
Photo by Franki Chamaki on Unsplash
While the human “eye” is still needed to guide this process, there will soon come a time when deep learning will allow for these exams to be returned instantly with onsite, wherever that may be, with analysis, ready for enabling the next steps in patient care. Benefits from this will include everything from better diagnosis to more accessible, less costly medical care.
We all know that any/all systems have risks associated with them. The healthcare industry is no different. Not a day passes now that we don’t hear the story of a hospital getting hacked, or government questioning more regulation on healthcare, or even how medicine is changing so quickly. As new tech is brought in that changes the field, making sense of it all can seem overwhelming and many are quick to add to concern about the risks.
However, these problems already existed. Data security, risk of injury, and the like are not all new to healthcare but have existed long before modern disruptive technologies existed. They are perhaps enhanced and changed by the new technologies but were always inherent to the systems themselves. It is how we seek to overcome them that will allow us to engage the conversation and better use the technologies made available to us.
Highly reputable nonprofits, like the Brookings Institute, do a fantastic job of relating the benefits, risks, and potential solutions to challenges regarding AI in health on a high level. Illustrating particularly relevant means to overcome issues like adding data security to create a sense of trust, expanding agency and governmental oversight to reduce risk of injury to patients, and better-educating doctors to engage the technology, they provide valuable insight into the many risk factors.
However, they leave out one particularly important factor. The patient’s role in how the tech is utilized and blended with their own lives. In their view, tech is something placed onto us, not something we have a participatory choice in. We believe that we are informed participants and capable of choosing how tech is allowed to enhance our lives. We have a choice in how it develops we the people. We are part of the equation.
Yes, Artificial Intelligence, especially when mixed with a complicated field like health and medicine, can be a daunting subject to explore. The complexities of integrating the language alone can be off-putting for so many of us in our daily lives.
However, this technology is here and changing the way we live and develop our health. It is imperative then that we find ways to continually improve ourselves through our communities and our dialogue while integrating the disruptive changes technology brings into our lives.
We need to find ways to better understand ourselves, the technologies that are disrupting our health, and the ways in which we share those worlds with the professionals that use those innovations to help, or at the very least, not harm us. We thank you for joining us on our journey and look forward to your thoughts and opinions.
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